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I’ve been using all manner of apps – from OneNote, to NotePad (and various substitutes), to index cards, to keep track of passwords, logins, and bits of code that I use all the time. SpeckyBoy – a site which is a cornucopia of resources for novices and serious coders and everyone in between – has [...]
Even with a good connection, with an excellent connection, when composing a WordPress post, it’s easy to trip over your own edits when backspace/delete, insert, cp,,pm functions whic hap0pen instantaneously on a local machine can tqake a while while waiting for the edit happe.on the remote server and refreshes in the New/Edit post windows in [...]
At Proof Branding, a really thoughtful, clever group of people use the metaphors of “proof” (as in scientific evidence), and “proof,” as in the measure of ethanol in a beverage containing ethanol – itself a metaphor and idiom indicating “strength” and “purity” – and some really beautiful graphics and text to make a great impression. [...]
I use OpenOffice more and more, although I’ve been slow to master OpenOffice Draw. In my blogging, and in other work, I often think in visual terms, but don’t necessarily have the skills to make it happen. To be more truthful, I don’t have the skills. And for its many strengths, there aren’t that many [...]
A Good Company, also known as “We Are A Good Company,” is that indeed. Came across them through their project League of Movable Type, because I was looking for their font League Gothic. The always amazing Randa Clay used League Gothic in a header logo/wordmark thatshe designed for my primaryweb project, Popular Logistics. A Good [...]
By their nature – reverse-chronological order – blogs favor fresh information. But since they’re searchable, internally or externally (via search engi.ne, for example) they become de facto “content management systems.” I’m in the middle of starting a nonprofit, thinking about logo and identity, and found myself – once more – reading a Randa Clay post [...]
There’s no “about” page, so I’m not sure if Hongkiat is one person, or many, but when Hongkiat tries to illuminate a problem, it does so with great thoroughness. Some examples: A recent article on data visualization Data Visualization with CSS: Graphs, Charts and More includes, by my count, 29 examples – each with a [...]
Blind Text Generator will generate Lorem Ipsum for you – and what’s more, lets you pick Cicero in English or Latin, use Kafka, Werther, or other more gibberish-like formats, and will let you precisely select number of words, paragraphs, and even fonts. So – here’s a quick example The quick, brown fox jumps over a [...]
18 Sites to help you create your logo from OpenJason, a developer, who, when he lists, he rules. Lots of smart and helpful stuff in diverse categories – here are a few that I thought were useful (thus exposing the weaknesses in my skill sets) 13 Alerting Sites (as in “watchdog,” or “infobot” – not [...]
Randa Clay, an excellent designer, is also an apparently infinite source of freebies, and useful advice. A few of her recent offerings: Randa’s 10 favorite free fonts The Ultimate Premium Theme (I’m not telling – and it’s a complicated answer, anyway) If you need some inspiration – check out Randa’s portfolio RandaClay.com Evernote lets you [...]
Paddy Donnelly has a brilliant post at Smashing Magazine – a sort of Scott McCloud-like1 tour de force about how layouts look. So I think Donnelly’s The Death of The Boring Blog Post? is as close to a “must-read” as is possible. For my direct purposes – I started blogging to write about disaster preparedness [...]
I’ve been experimenting with html editors – largely to get a handle on some layout issues while keeping the learning curve nice and shallow – and in doing so discovered Jennifer Kyrnin, who is the author of a number of excellent articles at About.com. Here’s her list of The 10 Best Free Web Editors for [...]
The CSS Guy – of askthecssguy.com is clever, funny, and when he lists lists – he lists some cool things- check out 59+ Amazing (and jaw-dropping) web design-related lists with titles that will rip your face off, blow your mama’s mind, and make you cry under the crushing pain of their inspiration. Check out his [...]
At Last, a Simple Guide to Mastering Twitter from the fine folks at Blogussion. But also – check out this excellent graphic: That article – about their redesign is by Alex, who is also the proprietor of Asnio – a blog about entrepreneurship. A blog about entrepreneurship by a teenager – I anticipated that it [...]
Christian Watson, of Smiley Cat Web Design, which has a subsidiary, Elements of Design (“an alternative web desig showcase”). Check out this beautiful gallery of pull-quotes – some of which I think I’d characterize as “call-outs,” which, in my mental taxonomy, are properly a subset of pull-quotes. Here’s one that I liked a lot, Gallery [...]
Learning the World is a blog by Martin Kliehm, a web developer in Germany who also specializes in accessibility. In “Accessible Drop-Down Menus,” Kliehm lucidly explains what’s problematic about them, and just as clearly lays out a number of means by which the barriers can be lowered, if not eliminated. Other posts worth knowing about: [...]
Sometimes a map will help your post make sense; on other occasions, it’s just an opportunity to add a beautiful image to a post. A great source for unusual and beautiful maps is Mappery.I just used a map of Manhattan in this post, NYC – free crosstown bus plan may reflect understanding of transportation system [...]
Alyssa Gregory, the autueur1 of Small Business Idea Generator blog.has a post 7 Dummy Text Generators: Which Is Your Favorite? on Sitepoint. Five I’ve known and used; two were new. As I’ve been tinkering with the design of my primary blog – Popular Logistics – I’ve started to identify the problems (let’s hope I’ve done [...]
HTML Ipsum Presents – is a website, as described by Smashing Magazine, “A useful little website created by Chris Coyier. It provides you with the standard Latin text already in HTML tags. Clicking on any of the blocks automatically copies the text to your clipboard!” Here’s one sample copied and pasted, in one click, from [...]
Dozens of links for those wanting to customize code – or build a theme from scratch: WordPress Developer’s Toolbox. Smashing Magazine. Most of this work is – admittedly – more sophisticated than my skill set – but the outcomes are all beautiful (or otherwise desirable), and, based on my experience with Smashing Magazine, likely to [...]
Blog Design Studio has great explanations (e.g. What is this NoFollow thing all about! – you won’t find a more concise explanation anywhere); free WP themes, some outstanding WP tutorials (particularly about security issues specific to WordPress, an often-ignored subject), and, not least, an impressive portfolio of their own work. One of those was the [...]
Found WeFunction via Noupe, another power-tool WordPress and web design site. Maybe not ideally suited for the first day after your first WordPress install, or the code-phobic. Unless what you need is inspiration, which WeFunction can provide in abundance. This is just some of what’s on their front page at the moment: 178 Free Icons: [...]
Back in 2007 – in dog-years, that’s 14 years ago, in ‘Net years, probably the square of 14, Randa Clay wrote this piece Design inspiration: 6 Outstanding Logo Sites | Randa Clay Design. Suffice it to say that I only knew one of the six – and they all rock. Go see for yourself – [...]
Pixelita Designs has a gallery of 10 Uncommonly Gorgeous Thesis Themes. We’re big fans of the Thesis Theme – (which is in evidence at my primary site, Popular Logistics) and of Pixelita Design as well, a Texas-based design firm that’s done some brilliant work. They’re sufficiently prolific that, in addition to their primary site, they’ve [...]
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